Smithfield Foods recognized for payroll initiatives

CHICAGO - Smithfield Foods Inc. was honored Wednesday by the American Payroll Association with the Prism Award for payroll best practices in the area of technology. It received the award at the online Payroll Benchmarking Trends in recognition of its efforts to implement a new system to streamline its payroll service for over 35,000 employees.

Prior to the launch of its new system, the centralized payroll team at Smithfield Foods was faced with an influx of service requests, increasing errors and overtime costs. After deploying the new system in just eight weeks, average email response time decreased from two days to an average of 6.6 hours. Since 2017, overtime hours have decreased by 48%, an average savings of $53,641.33 per year, the company said. As a result of the payroll department's success, several other departments at the company have implemented the same system.

"Smithfield Foods Inc. is a perfect example of how implementing strategic changes to an organization's payroll processes can contribute to the success of a company," said Dan Maddux, executive director of the APA.